Foreword by Daniel Day-Lewis

New Paintings

19th October - 13th November 2010

CADOGAN CONTEMPORARY

New Paintings

Now that I am totally blind I perceive what is near by touch and know a little of further afield from its sounds.

In these new paintings the space that surrounds me and the near, touchable figures extends into an im-aginary world of light and colour which then feeds back to give meaning to the figures, fusing, I hope, what I imagine and what I perceive into a single image.

Sargy Mann

New Paintings

Sargy’s painting makes me hungry. The gorgeously sensual works of his new exhibition are edible. I am greedy for them, gorging on image after image. I want more and more, and as I reach the last one I am still ravenous and impatient to start all over again. It’s a reflex, perhaps, in response to his fierce, youthful relish for the paint itself. Just as he wakens to the celebration of other worlds, so am I awoken by him to wonder at his discoveries. There is a freedom in his work, which only one with a supreme mastery of structure, light and color could ever afford. Whatever he owes to other influences and to the rigors of his own technique has long since been digested and paid for.

After the moving, intimate simplicity of the Frances paintings (though there are also a number of beautiful ones here), Sargy, in a gesture of astonishing boldness, has conjured scenes of immensely complex space and depth, a world populated by figures engaged, it seems, in mysterious interplay. There is a fascinating tension between the familiar gaiety of his palette and the solemnity of these visions; between the looseness of his painting and the precision of his composition. This quality of Sargy’s work was never more striking. These pictures evoke the strange, transitional state between dream and consciousness. In his majestic canvases, ‘Infinity Pool I’ and ‘Infinity Pool II’, the figures seem to move slowly, like sun-dazed sleepwalkers, through air thick

with heat, or they lounge and slump, heavy with inertia. Each player is stranded at the centre of their own story, each utterly absorbed in their tasks, preoccupations, and themselves. They mostly appear to be unmindful of each other, or if attempting to, not quite managing to communicate. These people are connected only through the painter. They seem to reflect the isolation, intensity and sensuality of the painter and of the process of creativity itself. Time is suspended.

How I long to see the jazz rhythms of Sargy’s hands laying down wash after translucent wash, line and punctuation as these images deepen and develop. The light is often blindingly white, sometimes deep and rich with an earlier or later sun or the refuge of the shade. The crazy angles and flash bulb white in “Frances at the Top of the Stairs”; the nude so ingeniously fleshed, immersed and luxuriating in her bath of light and her aloneness in ‘Standing Nude, after Bonnard’.

Nearly forty years ago, I lived under the same roof as Sargy. I remember so well his vigour and sense of purpose as he set out for a day of painting. Box and boards, a long stride, eyes aglitter. I looked forward to the fisherman’s return, which was never empty-handed. I was fascinated, perhaps even a little envious, of his quiet, optimistic self-containment, not having yet discovered the vital marriage of love, hard work, and discipline myself. He just got

Sargy By Daniel Day-Lewis

Infinity Pool II, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 ins.

Infinity Pool I, oil on canvas, 57 x 80 ins.

on with it. I loved his pictures then. His work was delightful and no less self-assured, but since that time his world has darkened and then flooded with light and joy. It has gained in depth and mystery. His visual honesty now swims on a current of imaginative and emotional honesty. I think after many years of placing himself in the shadow of his master, with no loss of modesty he now dares to stand in the light. The well-spring of imagination is no longer held at bay like a delicious sin but flows through him and his brushes. His forms have such weight and impeccable perspective, and yet they’ve been urgently summoned with spells of pigment-infused vapor. Nothing is careless; all

is apparently carefree. The vibrating tonal blues, roses and yellows, purples and greens, whites and blacks-- these are fibers of living matter applied in line, latticework, scribble, slash and stab, laid on and dripped. Is the painter observing himself in a dazzling white suit and hat as he appears from below, stage left, in ‘Café by the Sea, Girls in Green?’ Or upstage centre in ‘Infinity Pool I’? Fully artist and subject, master and pupil, the source of all this beauty is himself and the full depth of himself.

©Daniel Day-Lewis

Cafe by the Sea, Girl Reading, oil on canvas, 36 x 28 ins.

Street Cafe, oil on canvas, 44 x 60 ins.Frances Going Downstairs, oil on canvas, 38 x 24 ins.

Standing Nude, after Bonnard, oil on canvas, 38 x 34 ins.

Cafe by the Sea, Girls in Green, oil on canvas, 34 x 46 ins. Frances in a Black Coat, oil on canvas, 36 x 28 ins.

Cafe Above the Sea, oil on canvas, 57 x 80 ins.

Yellow Seascape, oil on canvas, 20 x 25 ins.

Bonnard Drawing on the Pink Path, oil on canvas, 28 x 36 ins.

Le Cannet Landscape, after Bonnard, oil on canvas, 28 x 36 ins.Frances at the Top of the Stairs, oil on canvas, 38 x 24 ins.

Figures on the Stairs, oil on canvas, 60 x 44 ins.

Sun Over Sea, oil on canvas, 17 x 25 ins.Frances on the Landing, oil on canvas, 34 x 38 ins.

Figures Overlooking the Sea, oil on canvas, 20 x 25 ins.

Gallery hours:Monday - Saturday 10am - 6pm

(or by appointment)

87 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3LD. Tel: 020 7581 5451 Fax: 020 7589 3222Email: info@cadogancontemporary.com

All paintings available to view on our website: www.cadogancontemporary.com

CADOGAN CONTEMPORARY

19th October - 13th November 2010

New Paintings

Sargy MannBorn Hythe, Kent 1937 Dartington School 1943-53 Oxford Technical College, 1953-58Camberwell School of Art and Crafts 1960-67 Teaching, Camberwell School of Art and Crafts 1969-88 Teaching, Camden Arts Centre 1969-88 Lives and works in Suffolk, England.

Selected Exhibitions1973 One-man Show, Salisbury Festival of Arts1975 2nd International Drawing Biennale, Second Prize1983 6th International Drawing Biennale1983 Hayward Annual1983 Spirit of London, South Bank, Second Prize1985 Spirit of London, South Bank, First Prize1983-85 Upper Gallery, Royal Academy, London1987 Cadogan Contemporary, London1987 Royal Academy Summer Show, London1988 Royal Academy Summer Show, London Daler Rowney Prize, 1987-89 South Bank Centre, Touring Exhibition ‘Past and Present’1987-89 Arts Council Touring Exhibition, ‘The Experience of Landscape’1989 Cadogan Contemporary, London1989 Royal Academy Summer Show, London1989 Ken Howard’s Choice at the Arts Club, London1989 Director’s Choice at New Academy Gallery/Business Art Galleries1990 Royal Academy Summer Show, London1990 Cadogan Contemporary, Works on Paper, London1990 Aldeburgh Festival 1990 ‘Spaces’1991 The Wolsey Art Gallery, Ipswich ‘Sargy Mann/Graham Giles’1991 Cadogan Contemporary, London1992 Discerning Eye, Collector’s Choice, Mall Galleries1993 Cadogan Contemporary, London1993 Chappel Galleries, Mixed Exhibition, Colchester1994 ‘Earlier Paintings 1967-84’, Cadogan Contemporary, London1995 Hunting Art Prizes Exhibition Royal College of Art, London

1995 ‘The First Aldeburgh 100 Exhibition’1995 Royal Academy Summer Show, London1995 Ernst & Young Exhibition1996 Cadogan Contemporary, London1997 Cadogan Contemporary, ‘Small Paintings 1967-1984’, London1999 Cadogan Contemporary, London2000 Hunting Art Prizes Exhibition, Royal College of Art, London2001 Cadogan Contemporary, London2003 Cadogan Contemporary, London2004 Chappel Galleries one man show, 2005 Cadogan Contemporary, London2006 ‘Cadaques’, Cadogan Contemporary, London2007 The Cut Arts Centre, Halesworth, with Graham and Julie Giles 2007 Discerning Eye, The Mall galleries, invited artist2008 ‘Frances” Cadogan Contemporary, London2009 ‘Gouaches’ Cadogan Contemporary, London

Sargy Mann’s paintings are in public and private collections all over the world.

Selected WritingsDrawings by Bonard, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1984Drawings by Bonnard’, JPL Fine Art3 catalogues of ‘Drawings by Bonnard’ JPL Fine ArtCatalogue of Raoul Dufy JPL Fine ArtConceived and selected ‘Past & Present’ Exhibition for theArts Council of Great Britain and wrote catalogue1987-88‘Bonnard Drawings’, John Murray 1991Conceived and Co-curated ‘Bonnard at le Bosquet’,Hayward Gallery, London 1994‘Sargy Mann, Probably the Best Blind Painter in Peckham’ SP Books, 2008

CADOGAN CONTEMPORARY